Torrevieja motorway bills 6.4% more but still in the red
Gradual reactivation of activity and a rebound in traffic have helped the highway concessionaire linked to the Alicante corridor, connecting Torrevieja and Cartagena, to push revenue higher over the past year. The surge has lifted earnings compared with the worst period of the pandemic, though the numbers have not yet returned to pre covid levels. This trend is reflected in the 2021 accounts filed with the Commercial Register for Ausur, a company owned by Pralesa and the Fuertes Group which operates the road. Overall, the business registered close to 44 million euros in benefits, aided in part by debt forgiveness arrangements arranged by its shareholders that inflated accounting profits.
Across the year the firm reported an 11.8 million euro turnover, up from about 9 million the previous year. The latter had been heavily impacted by a sharp decline in road traffic caused by containment measures and ongoing restrictions. Even with the rise, the executives who oversee the management statements stress that the number of highway users still falls short of normal pre-pandemic levels. Light vehicle traffic in 2021 remained about 29 percent below 2019 figures, while truck volumes were already creeping above that benchmark by roughly 2 percent.
In response to the revenue shortfall from the prior year, the company implemented cost containment measures. Ten workers left the payroll and a portion of the workforce faced postponement of employment contracts, resulting in a reduction of working hours by around 65 percent during a portion of the year. The firm also began a modernization drive aimed at expanding automation through the renewal of paid systems.
All of this contributed to an operating result that gradually improved, with a recovery from a 508,000 euro loss in fiscal 2020 to a substantial improvement in 2021. Ausur reported a net result of 43.7 million euros, a notable swing from the 1.9 million euro loss recorded in the pandemic’s first year. The improvement benefited from the debt forgiveness granted by lenders at terms well below face value, which bolstered the accounting figures and reflected on the company’s balance sheet.
Additionally, the accounts include a legal dispute against the government over the denial of compensation related to the state of alarm and the impact on income. The Supreme Court dismissed the companys request to extend the concession period as a remedy for the downturn, a decision that closed that avenue for relief but did not erase the overall improvement in earnings for Ausur.